Memories of a Time Lord
by Scout Girl
Summary: I can sense someone watching me, eyes on my back. I realize. It's them, here to stare at me. To haunt me. The Doctor mourns the Time Lords, watched by who?


Disclaimer: Doctor Who is not mine, I swear, Scouts Honour.

Dedication: Everyone who reads and reviews my story.

A/N, This is very angst and very depressing. Just a warning. I'm not trying to stop you reading it just be warned.

* * *

Memories of a Time Lord

Apart form the fact that the Doctor had been getting moodier and moodier all day, today had been a normal day in the TARDIS.

It had started when the Laiz leader had greeted the Doctor as "Time Lord, the last great Time Lord" The leader had then tried to continue the conversation but the Doctor wasn't having it, he just did what had to be done. Although Rose didn't think of it whilst he had sorted out the problems with the Hoix, it came back to her later as he retreated to the TARDIS, obviously in a bad mood, if the way he kicked out at nothing in particular and pretended to do something under the console to avoid her questions was anything to judge by.

Rose knew him so well by now. She knew that she could do nothing but let him groan and moan, though she thought that his previous self was more prone to do that. Standing up, she looked to his bent suited form.

"G' night Doctor," she muttered, loudly enough for him to hear her. Getting no reply, she added under her breath, "You miserable old sod."

Later on, as she lay in bed, Rose sensed rather than heard the Doctor walk past her room.

Sitting up in bed, she argued with herself for a moment- should she go after him, or stay?

Go. Opening her door quietly, she followed him, still in her pyjamas but too interested to be worried about that. She almost lost the Doctor a couple of times- it was hard to go fast and quietly at the same time mainly because, she made a lot of noise normally- but the swish of a trench coat gave her a route.

She crept after the Doctor, half guilty, half curious as to what was going on: the Doctor had long since finished tinkering with the TARDIS. He rubbed a hand along a door that had a word on it- well, it seemed like a word, for it was hard to see from Rose's distance; he stopped for a moment and brushed his other hand against his face as though swatting a fly away or maybe a memory?

Then, as suddenly as he stopped, he walked away as though he'd never paused. Even though Rose still wanted to keep up with the Doctor, she paused to look at the word which she found she couldn't understand it at all, the strange circular lettering and the strange thing being that the TARDIS had not translated this word and the TARDIS always translated for her but then the TARDIS had a telepathic link with the Doctor. Maybe the Doctor didn't want her to see it? Maybe he knew she was following him?

She sighed and walked in the direction that the Doctor had walked in, thinking that she may as well walk on now she'd come this far.

It took Rose awhile to find the Doctor again, and she almost gave up, but something made her keep going. When she did find him, she was shocked to see that his shoulders were shaking, and she'd seen it so often from her mother and various people she'd comforted that instinctively she knew he was crying.

She sat down slowly. This was not at all good. Since when did the Doctor cry? He was the strong one. He'd put his hand on her shoulder, he'd hug her; he'd help her get over her fears and troubles. Since when did he cry?

Rose felt nothing but guilt. First of all she was following the Doctor, and it was obvious that he wanted to be alone- otherwise, he'd have told her if he had wanted her with him, wouldn't he? Secondly, the really stupid reason that she felt guilty was the fact she had called the Doctor a miserable old sod. Thirdly was the reason that she had never thought the Doctor felt the same as she did, as humans felt, she didn't think that he felt in the same was basically she hadn't thought that he had emotions.

She looked up. Now she could not see the Doctor- he'd vanished. Sensing the correct way to go, she came to a door swinging backwards and forwards. Walking through it tentatively and gasping, she looked around.

She was in a meadow unlike any meadow on Earth. It had silver leafed trees and when she looked up she could see that the sky was a violent orange. Rose thought it was beautiful. So beautiful.

She saw the Doctor walk through the meadow, his shoulders still shaking. Leaning against a tree, she jumped back when she realised that it wasn't real, that it was just plastic... a very, very advanced plastic. She walked on a bit and pushed against the view of a city in the distance; as she suspected it was just a picture, stretched around.

She looked up at the beautiful orange sky which wasn't the sky at all, it was the TARDIS: She'd just changed the colours of the lights so that they glowed orange.  
Then it struck her-the odd word which wouldn't translate, the plastic, the view, the crying- this must have been what the Doctor's planet looked like.

Following the sounds of the Doctor, his quiet cries leading her to him, she walked on, still quietly, still tense in case he saw her.

Seeing him open a door and pull out some silver framed pictures, she saw it- just how false, how fragile, how different this world was.

* * *

_Surrounded. I'm surrounded by the past, surrounded everywhere I look. _

_I see Gallifrey burn her orange skin burnt to a smoldering wreck, I see them all burn: Daleks, Time Lords, Time Ladies, Time Tots, TARDISes, Gallifrey, Arcadia falling, the Eye of Harmony... and waited for me to burn too. _

_But I don't. Why am I not burning?_

I open my eyes and I'm back, back to reality, the reality that Gallifrey's gone, and it's so real. As real as the fact that I'm clutching the doorframe of the cupboard.

I leant back and slide down the doorframe until I was at the ground, still holding the pictures in my hand. My pictures of them.

Why did I not burn with the rest of them?

I've asked that question so many times. So many times. Too many times.

I welcomed death as my race did, I welcomed the fact that I would regenerate in the fire until my regenerations ran out.

I caused it. I DID it. I deserved to die, I destroyed them.

All the brave who died, and I... I was not one of them, even though I deserved it. I CAUSED IT!

Sobs rack my frame. I feel the tears roll down my cheeks. Tears. Emotions. Weak.

I've- I'd- always been different to the Time Lords. Always. I-I'd- hated the Time Lords. I now wish I had not hated them like I did. I could have made my peace. When there was time to. I thought I had forever to, would return a broken old man whom they could make an example of, and I'd close my ears and eyes to it. After exile, I could have made my peace. Not been a renegade. I could have worked and helped. But no. All I did was to argue and leave. The rebel. The strange one. Always in the right.

Then I returned when they needed me. And what did I do? I killed them all! After so many years, I came home and killed them! Why?

The Tears roll down my face and I finally let myself go into loud howling sobs, sobs so like those which I'd held in. I suppose today was one step too far though. One too many cookies on the plate. Even straight after the Time War it hadn't hit me, I was spending that whole regeneration running from the memory of it and never had time to look back, then it caught up with me. I was so busy that I had forgotten the pain and now it had risen so high that I couldn't hold it in.

I can sense someone watching me, eyes on my back. I realize. It's them, here to stare at me. To haunt me.

I look down at the pictures in my hands to distract myself. I can't remember getting them out the cupboard. In this room.

The room that she- the TARDIS- made me, the TARDIS, a little bit of home. Funny to think I stole her. She's all I have. My home. What home? No home.

The lonely God …

A prophecy about me, a God, a God doesn't kill, a God gives life, I'm a murderer not a God, the beast was right, 'The killer of his own kind' I am a killer, I killed my own race. Of all the titles I have and that I have been given, 'The killer of his own kind' suits me best and I know it was right, I didn't say anything because as usual the day needed to be saved and I pushed my thoughts to the back of my head but It was right. A beast set to kill everyone on the planet knows me better than Rose does. I can't think of Rose, just lose yourself in memories then perhaps you will find peace. I know that I will never find peace but I must keep trying. So I do, I delve into the place that I have abandoned, my memories, so I can attempt to find peace.

I need to find peace with the souls that I killed, with all of the deaths that I caused. The TARDIS, knows how I feel that's why she made me this room, I didn't ask her to she just did it. Because we are forever, the two of us alone, without a home, with out our home, our entire home is in this room.

This room, an image of Gallifrey. It's so false I could laugh, but it's all that's left. I normally don't dwell on the past but today's different, today the flood gates have lifted and I'm grieving properly for the first time.

I lift the first picture up.

"Romana," I say, as though I'm talking to someone, anyone to share the grief with, I'm talking to anyone but them because I know that they are listening, from just behind me they are listen to me and haunting me.

"Romanadvoratrelundar, I wouldn't, couldn't call her that though. I said I'd call her Fred or Romana. She chose Fred."

I wailed to who ever I was talking to.

"She regenerated too, Romana I and Romana II; she was on body five when I last saw her."

I swallow. "No, when I last saw her she was dead. Her thirteenth body hadn't even begun. And she wasn't just any old Time Lady," I boasted to no-one, the haunts of the past. "She was the High Lady President of Gallifrey, one of the best, she led the first attack in the Time War, she burned first."

I pick up the second picture. Romana as well, this time in her first body, I got on better with her in her second but they where both my friends. I throw the two pictures to the floor. She's here. She's watching me. She should be in my place, as flesh not just as a spirit or phantom to haunt me, she should have survived not me.

I can't look. Romana: that wound was too fresh, her smile still imprinted in my mind, her eyes still laughing in my head, her screams still echoing around my ears.

I look down at the next picture. From the Prydon Academy.

"I only passed my exams with fifty-one percent on my second attempt. It was a great party when we passed. They called me Theta Sigma it was a nickname, I never liked it much but still, they where my friends. Dead!" I wailed, grief consuming me, running through the walls of the dams I've built up so carefully.

"All dead now, no one left."

Again I throw away the picture. To fresher memories. Even though they died over three years ago in Rose's time. And they're here I can hear them in the distance making noises in the plants, the leaves rustling with their ghostly hands, their ghostly voices, noises just like breath, but it's just my mind wanting me to believe that they are alive but they are dead, but still hear to haunt me and I hate myself because they are dead and I lived, that it was my fault.

"I can never see them again. They've been washed off the slate."

Now there are only a couple of picture left on my lap. I look at the top one. I stop.

_Susan

* * *

_

He's stopped now, Rose peered out from the plant she was standing behind and held her breath. The tears where still falling down his face but all the movement had stopped. He was staring at a picture in his lap and Rose couldn't see what it was of. She almost, almost came out of her hiding place to comfort him but she just couldn't do it.

He lifted up the picture and Rose could only see the back of it. He brought it so his lips and kissed it and then he pocketed it. He stood up slowly and painfully and now he came out his trance. His shoulders shudder, his head shock and his tears where getting louder.

Rose brushed the plastic leaves from her face, and he spun around but his eyes where tight shut and red from crying.

"Leave me be", the Doctor cried but Rose didn't think he was talking to her,

"Leave me your dead all dead go leave me be"

Rose came out of her hiding place, and the Doctor's tears appeared heartbreaking and more distressing the near she got to them. She crouched down next to him.

"Doctor" she whispered tentatively and he flinched, or at least he thought it was a flinch, she couldn't tell though the sobs that where racking his frame.

"Leave me just let me be, I didn't …" he sobbed, and shook his head hard.

"I didn't want to, it was the only thing to do, stop haunting me and give me peace".

The Doctor stood up and held out a hand to steady him. Rose held her breath. She stood up after him.

"I can see you", he sobbed, and Rose almost jumped thinking he was talking to her,

"You're inside my mind all the time, just let me go"

After that he patted the pocket with the picture, as if making sure that it was still there. Then he slowly walked towards the door.

Rose stood there, in the middle of the room. She couldn't leave the room. She couldn't go after the Doctor, he had to be alone now, no one could help him now. Maybe one day he would come to her and she could try to help but until then she stood in the room unable to move and even if she could she couldn't it was like a grave. The room that was filled with reminders of the dead. She knew that she was crying. Her father had died when she was young, and she had gone back to meet him but the Doctor, the poor Doctor. His race where all dead and he could never go back and see them. He had told Rose this once, that they where removed from the Time lines. Removed forever, for all time.

Rose headed towards the area that the Doctor had sat in. She sat down among the pictures of the dead and cried. Cried for them, for herself and mostly for her Doctor, for her poor Doctor.

* * *

Scout Girl

BETAed by the fantastic Let'sDoTheTimeWarpAgain

A/N I have got a sequel planned so there will be more angst.


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